Stress theories

Dr. D. Dutta Roy, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata

STRESS THEORIESLecture note

Dr. D. Dutta RoyPsychology Research Unit

INDIAN STATISTICAL INSTITUTE203, B.T. Road, Kolkata- 700 108

E-mail: [email protected]: Performing art therapy centre,

Rabindra Bharati University

Web: http://www.isical.ac.in/~ddroy


What is stress ?


Write answers to following questions

How many people are stressed ?What are the bodily changes in stress ?Is there any positive stress ? Is there any negative stress ?What is the emotion of positive stress

experience ?What is the emotion of negative stress

experience ?


Definition • Physician Hans Selye was

pioneer who defines stress as a non specific response of the body to any demand characterized by the secretion of glucocorticoids.

• Glucocorticoid (glucose + cortex + steroid) hormone derives from their role in the regulation of the metabolism of glucose, their synthesis in the adrenal cortex, and their steroidal structure.


Stages of stress

• Selye developed concept of the general adaptation syndrome (GAS) to discuss three stages of stress :

• Alarm• A stage of resistance• Exhaustion


Alarm • In the first stage of GAS called

alarm reaction, the body releases adrenaline and a variety of other psychological mechanisms to combat the stress and to stay in control. This is called fight or flight response. The muscles tense, the heart beats faster, the breathing and perspiration increases, the eyes dilate, the stomach may clench. Believe it or not, this is done by nature to protect you in case something bad happens. Once the cause of the stress is removed, the body will go back to normal.


Resistance or Adaptation• If the cause for the stress is not

removed, GAS goes to its second stage called resistance or adaptation. This is the body’s response to long term protection. It secretes further hormones that increase blood sugar levels to sustain energy and raise blood pressure. The adrenal cortex (outer covering) produces hormones called corticosteroids for this resistance reaction. Overuse by the body's defense mechanism in this phase eventually leads to disease. If this adaptation phase continues for a prolonged period of time without periods of relaxation and rest to counterbalance the stress response, sufferers become prone to fatigue, concentration lapses, irritability and lethargy as the effort to sustain arousal slides into negative stress.


Exhaustion • The third stage of GAS is

called exhaustion. In this stage, the body has run out of its reserve of body energy and immunity. Mental, physical and emotional resources suffer heavily. The body experiences "adrenal exhaustion". The blood sugar levels decrease as the adrenals become depleted, leading to decreased stress tolerance, progressive mental and physical exhaustion, illness and collapse.


Effect of Stress on bodily changes


How stressors affect our organs


Stress and Immune system• Immune system is the body’s defense against illness

because it fights and destroys bacteria, viruses and other foreign substances that may invade our bodies. If this system is impaired, as in the case of prolonged stress, we are more prone to illness and disease.

• The corticoids and endorphins that are released into our body during the stress response reduce and dampen the activity of our immune system. This is called immunosuppression.

• Immunosuppression causes cold, allergies, sinuses and several psychophysiological disorders specially at the phase of exhaustion.


Stress experience


Stress variation

• Selye (1983) pointed four variations of stress.

• Overstress or Hyperstress• Understress or Hypostress• Damaging stress (Distress)• Good stress (Eustress)


PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS


PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESSORS

• Deprivation of needs– Physiological needs– Safety needs– Social needs– Self esteem needs– Self actualization

• Role conflict– Role set– Role specificity


Role Space Conflicts

• Self-Role Distance: This stress arises out of the conflict between the self-concept and the expectations from the role, as perceived by the role occupant.

• Intra-Role Conflict: Since an individual learns to develop expectations as a result of his socialization and identification with ‘significant’ others, it is quite likely that he sees certain incompatibility between the expectations (functions) of his role. For example, a professor may see incompatibility between the expectations of teaching students and of doing research. These may not be inherently conflicting, but the individual may perceive these as incompatible.

• Role Stagnation: As the teacher grows older, the need for taking up a new role becomes crucial. This problem of role growth becomes acute especially when an individual who has occupied a role for a long time enters another role in which he may feel less secure. However, the new role demands that an individual outgrow the previous one and take charge of the new role effectively. This is bound to produce some stress. In college which are fast expanding, and which do not have any systematic strategy of manpower development, teachers are likely to experience this stress of role stagnation .


Role Set Conflicts: • Role Ambiguity: When teacher is not clear about the

various expectations that people have from his role the conflict that he faces is called role ambiguity. Role ambiguity may be due to lack of information available to the role occupant, or due to lack of understanding of the ‘cues’ available to him.

• Role Expectation Conflict: When there are conflicting expectations or demands by different role senders (persons having expectations from the role), the role occupant may experience the stress. There may be conflicting from the boss, subordinates, peers or clients.

• Role Overload: When the role occupant feels that there are too many expectations from the ‘significant’ others in his role set, he experiences role overload.


Role Set Conflicts:• Role Erosion: A role occupant may feel that the functions which he

would like to perform are being performed by some other role. • Resource Inadequacy: Resource inadequacy stress is experienced

when the resources required by the role occupant for performing the role effectively are not available.

• Personal Inadequacy: When a role occupant feels that he is not prepared to undertake the role effectively, he may experience this stress. This role occupant may feel that he does not have enough knowledge, skills, or training, or he/she has not had time to prepare for the assigned new roles without enough preparation or orientation are likely to experience this type of stress.

• Role Isolation: the role occupant may feel that certain roles are psychologically closer to him, while others are a t a much greater distance. The main criterion of distance is the frequency and ease of interaction. When linkages are strong, the role isolation will be low & in the absence of strong linkages the role isolation will be high.


PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS RESPONSE

• Anxiety– Apprehension of danger– Inattentiveness– Forgetting– Irritability

• Depression– Loss of hope– Apathy– Feeling of

meaninglessness

• Burnout – Emotional exhaustion:

• Tired & fatigued feeling– Depersonalization

• Negative & Cynical Attitude

– Loss of feeling of personal achievement derived from their job

– Others evaluate them as negatively.


• It’s also less severe, more temporary in duration, and clearly caused by situational stressors rather than a biologically mandated chemical imbalance. While burnout isn’t a recognized clinical psychiatric or psychological disorder, there are some similar features between burnout and diagnosable conditions such as depression, anxiety disorders or mood disorders.


Burn out Curve

• Burnout is systematic process. Take preventive measures across each stage of changes


Work-Related Causes of Burnout

• Unclear Requirements: When it’s not clear to teachers how to succeed, it’s harder for them to be confident, enjoy their work, and feel they’re doing a good job.

• Impossible Requirements: Sometimes it’s just not possible to do a job as it’s explained. If a job’s responsibilities exceed the amount of time given to complete them properly

• High-Stress Times with No “Down” Times: where teachers work longer hours and handle a more intense workload for a time.

• Big Consequences for Failure: People make mistakes; it’s part of being human. However, when there are dire consequences to the occasional mistake.

• Lack of Personal Control: People tend to feel excited about what they’re doing when they are able to creatively decide what needs to be done and come up with ways of handling problems that arise.


PERSONALITY TYPE

• Type A• Type B


Burnout Model

Stress in College

Job Related Stress

Role Stress

Life Stress

Emotional exhaustion

Depersonalization

Negative reactions to Personal accomplishment

Type A Personality

Social Network


COPING STRATEGIES


Coping strategies • Appraisal focused: Appraisal-focused strategies occur when the

person modifies the way they think, for example: employing denial, or distancing oneself from the problem. People may alter the way they think about a problem by altering their goals and values, such as by seeing the humour in a situation.

• Problem focused: They do this by finding out information on the problem and learning new skills to manage the problem.

• Emotion focused : Emotion-focused strategies involve releasing pent-up emotions, distracting one-self, managing hostile feelings, meditating, using systematic relaxation procedures.

• http://books.google.co.in/books?id=aLWW8PIXWpAC&pg=PA551&dq=General+adaptation+syndrome&hl=en&ei=zqOVTKWYJIvqvQPv1s2ZDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=General%20adaptation%20syndrome&f=true

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_(goal)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Values

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humour

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information


Individual approach in stress management


Enactive mastery experience Close your eyes. Think that you are away from the job. You

are on the job. Job has no control over you. Do job analysis now.

Job analysis: Think of main job, their task components and related abilities, temperament, job environment, job network (input-process-output), your specific roles etc.

Self-analysis: Do your judgment about P-E fit. Assess your specific need and limitation. Make strategy as how can you enhance or control target behaviour. Write target behaviour like to enhance or to control.

Enacting : Enacting specific role to fulfill target behaviour. Study its outcome.


Vicarious experience• Write about target

temperament, aptitudes, interests to enhance or to control.

• Identify specific expert around you, observe his behaviour.

• If possible, read autobiography of expert person or see the movie etc.

Late D.P. Kohil, Founder Director, CBI,


Verbal persuasion• Give or collect feedback from others about

your performance.


Physiological and affective state

• Progressive relaxation• Music therapy• Vibroacoustic therapy• Autogenic training• Time management • Meditation or Yoga


Time Management

• Time management refers to a range of skills, tools, and techniques used to manage time when accomplishing specific tasks, projects and goals. This set encompasses a wide scope of activities, and these include planning, allocating, setting goals, delegation, analysis of time spent, monitoring, organizing, scheduling, and prioritizing. A time management system is a designed combination of processes, tools and techniques.


Autogenic training

• The technique involves the daily practice of sessions that last around 15 minutes, usually in the morning, at lunch time, and in the evening. During each session, the practitioner will repeat a set of visualizations that induce a state of relaxation. Each session can be practiced in a position chosen amongst a set of recommended postures (e.g. lying down, sitting meditation, sitting like a rag doll, etc.). The technique can be used to alleviate many stress-induced psychosomatic disorders.


Progressive relaxation

• Progressive relaxation involves alternately tensing and relaxing the muscles. A person practicing it may start by sitting or lying down in a comfortable spot and taking some deep breaths, and then he or she will proceed to tense, then relax, groups of muscles in a prescribed sequence (one such sequence is starting with the hands and moving up to the arms, shoulders, neck, and head, and then down the torso and legs to the feet). The effect of the tension-relaxation sequence is to cause deeper relaxation than would be achieved by simply attempting to relax.


Vibroacoustic therapy• Vibroacoustic Therapy

(VAT) is performed by transferring amplified sound directly to the human body through loudspeakers or transducers that are embedded in a bed or vibrotactile device.

• The innovative therapy was introduced by Norwegian musician/researcher, Olav Skille, in 1982. VAT utilizes electronically-generated low frequency tones (generally in the 30-120 Hz range), usually mixed with synthesized music, to treat a variety of conditions.

Olav Skille


Yoga


Rabindrik therapy

• Identify specific words that will enhance your capability to control over the environment.

• Explore it in Geetbitan / Sanchayita;• Listen, sing and perform it.


Group approach in Role stress management


Role stress

• Police officers are playing multiple roles simultaneously and consecutively according to the job demands in group. Some roles are written and some are not written. This causes both role space and role set conflicts.


Role space conflictRole space (the dynamic

relationship amongst the various roles an individual occupies and his self) has three main variables : self,the role under question, and the other roles he occupies.

• Example: DIG is asked to find out the clue alone..


Role set conflict

• Role set consists of important persons who have varying expectations from the role that he occupies.

• Example: DIG is asked to arrange the case for proceedings within time limit, he is requested by his colleagues to find some clues for certain case. He finds that his junior takes long leave so he has to perform that role also.


Role stress management

Role analysis;Role drama;Role feedback;


Effect of disaster, war, violence, terrorism & trauma on individuals

and groups


What is disaster ? • There are four different meanings of disaster

– Disaster as agents for example earthquake, tornado and fire

– Physical impact of the agent as the resulting property damage or loss of life

– Social impact created by the physical impact. It includes disruption of human settlements

– Evaluation of physical and social impact using standard of evaluation. The analysis includes (a) hazard analysis (b) vulnerability analysis ( c ) disaster relevant resource analysis and (d ) assessment of agent impacts and victim needs


Traumatic events• Types

– Individual exposed• Intentional: assault, robbery, rape• Unintentional: motor vehicle accident, injury

– Communities exposed• Human made : Technological accident, plane crash• Natural: hurricane, earthquake, tornado

• Dimensions of traumatic events– Threat to life– Exposure to the grotesque (dead body)– Physical harm or injury– Loss of significant others– Loss of property– Information stress


Psychological consequences• Psychiatric morbidity

– High perceived threat, Low controllability, Lack of predictability, High loss and injury, Exposure to the dead and mutilated body.

• Bereavement • Psychosocial, cognitive and biological effects of traumatic events

are complex and interrelated. For some posttraumatic psychiatric symptoms are transitory. They respond to education, enough rest, maintaining biological rhythms (sleep and eat at right time). Limiting media exposure can minimize the disturbing effects on children. Educating spouses or of significant others of distressed can assist in treatment.

• For some, new experiences reminded traumatic events and causes post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.


PTSD

• A number of treatment approaches like psychodynamic therapy, group therapy, psychological debriefing, cognitive behaviour therapy, pharmacotherapy, psychosocial rehabilitation, marital and family therapy are useful interventions.


Symptoms


Interventions for children


Performing art therapy • Play therapy, drawing and dancing

give children the opportunity to express their feelings and concerns about the earthquakes. The "Planning Your Future" component of the project helps each youth develop a life plan with both short and long-term goals. Then, the youth work together to develop goals, which fosters solidarity and community participation.


Management


Thank You


References• Freudenberger, H.J. (1974). Staff burn-out Journal of Social Issues,

30, 159-165. • Shinn, M., Rosario, M., Morch, H. and Chestnut, D.E.

(1984). Coping with job stress and burnout in the human services. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 846-876.

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Stress theories

Health & Medicine